Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

-D.H. Lawrence, “Snake”

 ― 

“So that was your big falling out?  Luke Skywalker?” 

“Basically.” 

 ― 

The universe was merciful enough that Steve passed his Caesar retake with a B minus.  Ms. Click handed it back to him while giving him another once-over, again stopping just short of saying you look like hell .  Instead, she tutted and said, “Still not sleeping?” 

He shook his head no, and earnestly took her advice to buy some chamomile tea.

As soon as he got home, he microwaved a mug of water and steeped two bags of Bigelow’s.  Beer was more surefire, but he couldn’t justify it when he was still trying to shake Saturday night’s headache.  

In the end, the tea didn’t do much more than scald his tongue and taste like soapy water; but the mug gave him something to hold while he paced around.  

Jonathan hadn’t answered his calls on Sunday, either; the last time Will turned him away― he’s doing homework, sorry ―his tone had been apologetic, almost pitying.  Steve had told him that it was alright, and to come swim again next weekend if he wanted.  

He could maintain friendships with tweens who wanted to use his pool, if nothing else.

There had been no more dreams, partly because he was barely sleeping and when he did he was having nightmares, the kind where he fell off a cliff and then jolted awake, heart racing.  A part of him had childishly hoped that the chamomile tea would serve the function of some magical potion, sending him into a prophetic sleep from which he would only awake once he had figured out how to make Jonathan talk to him again.  

He would’ve settled for something nice about listening to cassettes or joining the circus.  

 ― 

On Sunday night, something had possessed him to put the copy of Japanese Whispers Jonathan made for him into his Walkman.  Out of ideas and sick of pretending he was going to finish his tea, Steve wandered up to his room and pressed play again.

By track four, he remembered that The Cure’s most-used word was kiss.  

Once upon a time, Jonathan had been insulted when Steve called it sex music, so they spent one of their listens tallying it: Every kiss; every mention of going to bed ; and anything else about mouths or hands that was sung in that particular sultry way of Robert Smith’s.

At the end of the night, Steve had triumphantly declared, “It’s sex music or it’s suicide music.  No in between.”

“Sometimes both,” Jonathan said, which was as close Steve ever got to an admission of defeat.  

The last time he saw it, the composition book where he’d jotted down his notes on The Cure was still in Jonathan’s bedroom, discarded on his cluttered desk.  He didn’t really need it anymore, having become fluent in British goth; but now he wished he’d grabbed it.  

Jonathan would probably burn it.

Before this, they’d been one-to-one on giving each other the silent treatment: Once when he pissed Jonathan off with some flippant comment about girls, and then again when Nancy had dumped him and Jonathan was both the first and last person he wanted to see for a few days.  

Steve couldn’t figure out what he’d done to earn this extended punishment.  It wasn’t like he’d said something truly bigoted―he’d been careful not to say queer , remembering the way Nancy had scolded him.  Maybe he’d telegraphed disgust or discomfort on his face, though he didn’t think so; he didn’t even feel particularly disgusted or uncomfortable.  He’d actually surprised himself by being something closer to confused or fascinated, like he’d figured out that Jonathan was an alien and wanted to learn more about his home planet.

Against his better judgment, Steve let the tape keep rolling and allowed his mind to wander.  It landed, squarely, on Jonathan.

He wondered if Jonathan had ever kissed a guy; if there was somebody in one of his classes or at his job, someone besides Mark Hamill, who he wanted to.  

And then he started to feel sort of like a pervert, so he tried to think about something else.

All that came to mind was the stuff Tommy’s older brother had told them when he came home from Michigan last summer, about them having their own bars and campus groups.  He’d said those bars were to blame for some new, fucked up cancer that was making gay guys drop like flies; he’d said the last part in a way that sounded, to Steve, a lot like good riddance.  

He ended up trying to picture Jonathan in a bar, any bar, and couldn’t―Jonathan didn’t even like the smell of beer.  It was probably for the best: Steve didn’t want to think about Jonathan wasting away with cancer.  Maybe there were gay guys who hung out at record stores.  

 ― 

School ended in mid-May, leaving Steve staring down the barrel of a long, lonely summer. 

Ms. Click had told him she might need a house-sitter at some point in July, scribbling her phone number on a Post-It and having him jot down his.  She also told him to call her if he needed anything, complete with meaningful eye contact that let Steve know just how pitiful he must have looked for the past few weeks.  Ms. Click had really grown on him, but he crumpled her Post-It up and threw it in the trash.

Like it had always been that way, the kids came almost every weekend to swim; sometimes they’d get rained out and still want to come over to watch a movie.  Steve was officially a scholar of their ongoing DnD campaign against the vodyanoi―which he steadfastly refused to join, because he still had one shred of dignity.  Lately, they’d started bugging him to get a walkie-talkie.  

Humiliatingly, they had become the highlight of Steve’s week.

But he was lonely, in all the ways that counted: Lonely for someone his own age to talk to, to hang out with.  Lonely for one person in particular, who he’d spent the better part of a month trying and failing to make himself hate.

Jonathan was doing that thing where he made himself invisible again, so that Steve couldn’t even pass him in the hallway without going out of his way to wait outside of the darkroom.  He had tried that, thinking it might force them to talk, but only once: The stricken look on Jonathan’s face had stuck with him.

It made him realize that he wanted to talk to the Jonathan who was his friend, not the pinned-down frightened rabbit; and he couldn’t bear the thought of being the one doing the pinning.  Of Jonathan being afraid of him, again.  

When Steve tried hating him instead―for being a coward and thinking the worst of him and acting like he was dead―he realized it was exactly what Nancy had done.  And that made Steve think that maybe he was the problem after all, so he couldn’t hate Jonathan either.

In the end, he just picked Will up and dropped him off and pretended he wasn’t craning his neck to see if Jonathan was the one opening the door.  Sometimes, Will would appear to take pity on him, throwing out excuses Steve didn’t ask for: “Jonathan’s been working a lot” or “he’s got the flu.”  Ms. Byers rushed his car a few times, trying to shove a twenty in through his window or offering to pay for a pizza, which Steve always refused.  

When he asked Will how Jonathan was doing and if he was hanging out with anybody else, the answers stayed the same: “fine” and “no.”  

“Tell him he can come next time,” Steve would say, and Will would nod and give Steve a sad, knowing look like he was the little kid in the situation.  

The other boys were more direct.  

“When did you and Jonathan go back to being enemies?” Dustin asked.  They were all packed into the car for a trip to the video store, leaving Steve with no escape.

“We aren’t enemies,” Steve protested.  

“You used to be at Will’s house all the time,” Mike said accusingly.  Steve made sure to glare at him in the rearview mirror; for his part, Will slunk down in the passenger seat and looked ashamed.  “Now he won’t even go swimming!”

“It’s adult stuff.  We’re busy,” he snapped, hoping that adult stuff sounded boring enough to end it .

Scoffing, Dustin asked, “What are you busy with?”

“Yeah, what are you busy with?” Mike echoed, just as Lucas cut in with a nervous, “Guys…” 

Steve put a stop to it by saying, “Somebody’s gotta haul you little shits around, don’t they?”  They all looked at each other, as if realizing for the first time that they were in fact being hauled around in Steve’s car.  

But Mike still eyed him suspiciously before asking, “Are you really gonna let us rent Cujo ?” 

 ― 

For a while, the adjustment to his newly Jonathan-free life kept Steve’s mind off of what had, in a roundabout way, started all of this: The kissing dream.  But sometimes, whenever there was nothing good on TV and he didn’t have a bunch of thirteen year olds jabbering in his ear, his thoughts skirted dangerously close to it.  

Inevitably, it’d be nice to hang out with someone would morph into it’d be nice to hang out with Jonathan.  He’d meander down that path for a while, lamenting how listening to music he didn’t even particularly like―he could admit that now, at least, about most things Jonathan had showed him other than The Cure―had once been preferable to getting drunk and even sex.  

At some point he might light a cigarette and be transported to those he’d smoke at 2 AM while Chester sniffed around their feet.  Steve had learned to blow smoke rings because Jonathan had bet he couldn’t, and would puff them at his face and pretend to be wounded when Jonathan took a half-hearted swipe at him. 

The first time Steve did it, he had wheedled at Jonathan until he was forced to admit it was impressive.  “It’s my superior mouth strength,” he had said, winking.  “I can tie a knot in a cherry stem, too.” 

Jonathan had rolled his eyes at that.  That was a common feature of these memory-trips: Jonathan eye-rolling and scoffing and lapsing into weird silences.

Steve thought he’d hated it, at the time.  

From there he’d dissolve into sadness, which bled into regret over how he’d left the last time he slept over―all over a stupid fucking dream.  But how was he supposed to know it was the last time?  He’d never even gotten to explain himself.

Without fail, he would find some way to stop the process there, usually with the assistance of a six pack procured from Eric.  

There had been a few close calls where he didn’t notice Jonathan’s car in the parking lot until he was halfway in the door and spotted a familiar face beyond the glass.  Jonathan never seemed to notice him―though it wouldn’t surprise Steve if Jonathan was just willing him to go away by turning his back.  On those occasions he’d enact his backup plan: Drive around and blast music that he and Jonathan had never discussed.  At first he had tried listening to stuff Jonathan hated, but Billy Joel was tainted forever.  What was left was a small selection of his parents’ discards.  

It didn’t take him long to get worn out on Hank Williams Sr. and Loretta Lynn.  

One Saturday in early June, after double and triple checking that Jonathan’s car was parked at the BP, he chanced a trip to the record store downtown.  Steve hadn’t been there in the flesh since he bought Pornography last year; but Jonathan was always going on about how great their selection was and how the owner, Dan, would sometimes slide a few semi-recent issues of Rolling Stone across the counter free of charge.  

It smelled simultaneously dusty and damp, which Steve remembered from last time―a sort of modern twist on old book smell.  Dan greeted him with a curt nod, probably assuming he was there to buy something disgustingly plebeian like the new Bruce Springsteen.  

There was no danger of that, with Jonathan’s mocking impression of “Born to Run” seared into his memory.

Steve approached the counter with caution.  Dan looked like he was easily startled.

“Do you have Blue ? by Joni Mitchell?” 

He had decided on it partially at the recommendation of Ms. Click, but mostly because Jonathan had never voiced an opinion on Joni Mitchell one way or the other.  Once Steve said what he was looking for, Dan was much more accommodating.  He even recommended another album by someone named Vashti Bunyan.

“Two of the most beautiful voices of the modern age,” Dan said wistfully.  

That sounded promising enough, so Steve paid for both tapes and a handful of Archie comics from the rack by the counter, where Dan sold everything from Jonathan’s beloved Rolling Stone to Archie to Payday bars.

Steve was turning to go, promising Dan he’d come back to tell him what he thought of Vashti Bunyan―who Dan insisted should have been a superstar but had instead dropped off the face of the planet―when he saw it.  

There was an open box on the counter, a fresh shipment of cassettes with covers in bright primary colors.  He would’ve recognized it anywhere.  Jonathan had torn the article announcing it out of a magazine and tacked it to the corkboard in his room. 

He was here to get music that didn’t make him think of Jonathan, which was nearly impossible; and he certainly wasn’t here for this, a glaring reminder of the first thing they’d ever really bonded over.

“Is that the new Cure album?”

Dan shook his head in the affirmative; Steve, a man possessed, was already opening his wallet. 

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, since he and Jonathan had never listened to it together.

Because of the possession, he asked, “Has Jonathan Byers gotten a hold of it yet?”  When Dan shot him a quizzical look, Steve added, “We’re friends, so I know he’s crazy about them.  And he’s in here all the time.” 

Steve scuffed his shoes against the threadbare carpet and avoided eye contact and tried to pretend that saying we’re friends didn’t feel like vomiting up broken glass.

Dan’s quizzical look didn’t fade; but there were no rules of patient confidentiality in record store sales, so he answered.  “They just got in today.  Expect I’ll see him sometime this week.” 

“Can I pay you for two of these, then?”  Steve cleared his throat.  “But don’t tell him it was me.  It’s a birthday gift.  A surprise.”

Jonathan’s birthday wasn’t until the end of the month―the 29th, to be exact.  Before everything went to hell, Steve had been pondering for months if he’d need to get him a gift.  He didn’t want Jonathan feeling pressured to get him something on his birthday in September; and he and Tommy had never done gifts even though they were friends for nearly a decade.  Gifts were usually reserved for his girlfriends, and Steve typically couldn’t keep those around long enough to worry about it.  

But he wanted to do it, in that moment, for selfish reasons.  

He wanted Jonathan to listen to The Top for the first time and not be able to stop wondering who’d paid for it, even if he concluded that it was his mom.  Steve wanted to flicker across his mind, even if it was just as a possibility, as a what if .

Dan, who was probably in no place to turn down sales, took the cash without missing a beat.  “Your secret’s safe with me, kid.” 

 ― 

Dan was right about Vashti Bunyan having a beautiful voice: She sounded how Steve always imagined those traveling medieval bards that sometimes pop up in Shakespeare plays would.  But then she was talking about walking around in someone’s mind to see what they think of her, about being looked at in a loveless way.  

Steve ejected it and put in Blue , which ended up beating him over the head with breakup songs.  

It started off with I hate you some, I love you some and by the time he reached Ms. Click’s favorite, “River,” Steve felt dangerously close to crying.  He couldn’t remember the last time he cried; if he had to guess, it was during his roadside meltdown the night Nancy dumped him.  

Nancy should be who all of this sad shit was making him think about.  He should hear wanna be who you wanna see and have to fight the urge to show up at her door with a dozen roses.  But Nancy didn’t even cross his mind until he thought about how she should be crossing his mind.  

He missed having someone to watch Gilligan’s island with; he missed the way her face lit up when she told him she’d been selected as junior editor for the school paper; he even missed how she’d call him an idiot.  

That was as far as it went.  Steve missed her the way he sometimes still missed Carol.  When he tried to dredge up something more intimate, like the smell of her shampoo, it was as if the information had been shuffled out.  Replaced, by the smell of the cheap Big Buy brand that came in an ambiguous fruit scent and was usually on a 2-for-1 special.  

By then, he had given up on clearing his head by driving.  When he got home, he sank into the couch with one of the Archie comics he’d bought because at least that was for children, so Archie and Betty never argued for more than the length of an issue.

Of course, in this particular issue, Jughead was described as “a man who disliked, feared, avoided, and was turned off by girls [...] To him, a girl was a no-time thing.”  

Steve wanted to bash his head into the coffee table.

 ― 

Two Fridays later, Steve had taken the kids to Ghostbusters , which they had apparently watched upwards of a dozen times between the four of them, but were happy to see again for his sake.  During the previews, he felt a tug at his sleeve.  He wordlessly extended the popcorn bucket, not wanting to tear his eyes away from the blood-drenched trailer for the new The Hills Have Eyes.  

“Steve,” Will hissed.  “Jonathan told me to give you this.  He said he borrowed it from you.” 

He had pushed the popcorn bucket away and was holding something out to Steve in the dark.  Something compact and rectangular and…cassette shaped.

That fucker.

“This isn’t mine,” Steve whispered, because he refused to do this.  

It was nearly pitch-black in the theater; but he could see that Will looked pained.  “He said you would really want it back.”   

“How can I want back something that doesn’t belong to me?” 

Just then, Mike leaned over from the other side of Will to glare at him: No talking .  So Steve shook his head emphatically and made an X with his hands in what he hoped would be interpreted as a no way gesture.  

Miraculously, it was then that the opening credits rolled.  Will relented, tucking the tape back into his pocket. 

When Steve left the theater that night, he couldn’t have recalled the plot of Ghostbusters with a gun to his head.  But over a year later, he could probably recount the fight he and Jonathan had been having in his head with 90 percent accuracy.  In summary:

Steve:  You bastard.  That was a birthday gift.

Jonathan : You are too nice and handsome.  It intimidates and pisses me off.  Forgive me.

(They hug.  Steve had recently decided that he would be OK with that.) 

It was pretty fantastical, even for an argument he’d made up.

 ― 

Jonathan didn’t try to send the tape back by way of Will again; but three days later, it materialized in Steve’s mailbox.  Steve left it at the BP counter in the capable hands of Eric; the next morning, it was laying on his front lawn.    

In a pathetic way, the back and forth was sort of titillating: Knowing that Jonathan had been there, even if it was just to hurl the tape out of his moving car.  It was like having a conversation where the only thing they could say was “fuck you” and “no, fuck you .” 

The day Steve found the tape in the yard coincided with one of his increasingly-frequent hangouts with Will and his friends, who he had just recently learned called themselves “The Party” when there was a debate over whether Steve could become a member without ever having played DND.  Mike had insisted that he couldn’t, while Dustin protested that Eleven had never played either, and Mike snapped that it was different .  Because Steve had never had to pull two fighting children off of each other and didn’t plan to start that night, he’d insisted that he didn’t want to join their lame Party anyways.  

He pulled into the Byers’ driveway with the tape in his glove box―planning to copy Jonathan’s mailbox trick―when Ms. Byers came rushing out after Will, waving cash.  He refused, as always; but as she was turning to go, he said, “Oh, Ms. Byers?  Could you give this to Jonathan?  It’s for his birthday.”  He flashed his most Parent-Charming smile and ignored the look that Will was giving him from the passenger seat.  

She accepted it with a gasp and, “Oh, you beat me to it!  He’ll love it.”  

That put an end to the tape debacle.  For a few days, Steve hoped that it was because Jonathan had finally started to see reason: The tape could function as a peace offering, even if it had originally been meant as a do you think about me?  He even had this stupid hope that Jonathan might call.

There would be no need for a peace offering if Jonathan had just fucking talked to him two months ago, or any time since then.  If he would stop assuming the worst, a habit that Steve thought they were actually, finally past until he said do you like girls and Jonathan must have heard faggot .  

Maybe after all this time, he still felt like Steve was playing some joke on him.  Like as soon as he confirmed it, Tommy was going to leap out from behind the dresser and kick his ass.  

Even as he was thinking it, Steve knew he was bringing Tommy into it because couldn’t let himself think that Jonathan thought he was capable of that.  

Jonathan knew him, by now.  He knew about Steve’s asshole dad and his hair routine; knew what Steve was like when he was drunk and how he took his coffee; knew the reason Nancy dumped him, which Steve would rather die than tell anyone else.  They’d never really talked about that again, but Steve hadn’t been so drunk that he couldn’t remember calling himself Holden Caulfield.  

He should have said it that night, in those few horrible seconds where Jonathan was just staring at him before rushing out the door: I can’t kiss girls either, for my own weird reasons.  I even had a dream that I kissed you.

 ― 

Ms. Click called him the last week of June.  By the end of the year, their relationship was friendly at the best of times; but this Ms. Click was summertime and the living is easy, oh-just-call-me-Lucy levels of casual as she quipped, “I’m visiting my terrible hag of a mother in two weeks, if you’re still up to house sit.”  

Steve went to her house the week before, to be shown around and meet the cats.  It was a little bungalow just past the Byers, with a massive front garden and a screened-in porch.  He didn’t see a single cat that night: Ms. Click explained that they were scared of men.  

“Thank my ex-husband,” she said, rolling her eyes.  “But they’ll come around once they realize you’re the one feeding them.” 

She asked if he had dinner plans and he truthfully said no and, before he knew it, he was eating spaghetti at her patio table.  Once they got past the initial awkwardness, Steve found that it was actually pretty fucking refreshing to talk to someone whose sole concern in life wasn’t defeating the vodyanoi.  

He told her about buying Blue at the record shop, how Dan had said Joni Mitchell had one of the most beautiful voices of the modern era.  

Ms. Click twirled her spaghetti thoughtfully.  “I might have to take a trip there myself.  I always thought it was just some dump.”  

“I did too.  Jonathan turned me on to it.” 

The band-aid had already been ripped off a half hour prior when Ms. Click asked how Jonathan was doing.  Steve had given her an evasive answer about how he was working a lot but seemed OK, which was met with a quizzical eyebrow raise.  But all she said was, “I like you two hanging out together.  He’s a sweet boy.  Just needs someone like you to get him out of his shell.”  

Steve nodded and deftly changed the subject by asking what made her mother such a terrible hag, which Ms. Click was all too happy to talk about.  

He wanted to tell her that he had tried, in his own way, to get Jonathan out of his shell―by force―and that it didn’t work out too well.  He wanted to tell her the real reason that Blue depressed the hell out of him.  He thought she seemed like the kind of adult who’d listen and have some sage advice about it without prying for all of the things Steve couldn’t say outright.

But all he could say was, “The owner’s pretty cool.  His name’s Dan-something.” 

As he was leaving―well past eight o’clock, with a container of leftovers and a page of notes on the different needs of the cats and the garden―Ms. Click called after him from the porch.

“Steve?  You’re a sweet boy, too.” 

 ― 

For the week of house-sitting, Steve chose Dustin as his designated assistant based on his qualifications.  

“You have a cat, right?”

“His name’s Mews.”  

In Steve’s book, that meant he was practically a cat behaviorist. 

Dustin’s services weren’t really needed, since the most they saw of five out of the six cats was a flash as they scampered by.  But there was a fat brown tabby named Walden who would come running at the sound of food hitting the bowl and, if Steve held very still, rub against his legs.  

“Henderson, does your cat do this?” Steve asked.  Walden had trailed them onto the porch, where Dustin was watering the petunias.  Every other step, the cat tangled around Steve’s ankles in what seemed like an effort to trip him to death.  

Dustin shot him a brief glare, probably on account of the “last-naming;” apparently, the kids thought that it was something only meatheads did.  This had encouraged Steve to do it even more.  

“He wants to mark you with his pheromones,” Dustin said, shrugging like it was the most obvious thing in the world.  

“His what?” 

“His pheromones , Steve.  His scent.  It designates you as a member of his pack.”  When Steve just stared, Dustin added, “Humans have them too.  It’s what makes you wanna have sex.”  

Steve grimaced.  “Ew.  You are not allowed to say ‘sex.’” 

Dustin sighed, which Steve took to mean grow up . 

“Okay, what about mate ? reproduce ? Pheromones serve an evolutionary, biological purpose.”  

Steve didn’t know why the fuck he felt possessed to, but before he could stop himself, he asked, “So what about gay guys?  Can they not smell them or something?” 

Dustin took it in stride.  He had already turned back to the petunias, clearly bored of explaining elementary concepts to someone half a decade older.

“They might just receive the information differently.  There are probably studies.”  

Naturally, as Steve was tossing and turning in Ms. Click’s guest bedroom that night, it was all that he could think about.  He didn’t think he’d ever picked up on someone’s pheromones ; but he had memorized the smell of a very specific combination of Big Buy shampoo and Ivory soap, coffee breath and a dingy coat that smelled a bit like cigarettes.  

 ― 

In spite of his and Jonathan’s cold war over the cassette, Steve couldn’t actually bring himself to listen to The Top until the end of July.  He had gone to see Dan a few more times, been talked into Joan Baez and Karen Dalton and Janis Ian.  Once, he ran into Ms. Click as he was leaving and she seemed almost flustered to see him there, like he hadn’t been the one to recommend it just a few weeks prior.    

Eventually Steve decided he was burnt out on keening female vocalists, and The Cure was as good a palate cleanser as any; plus, he’d already paid for it.  He popped it into his walkman and clamped his headphones firmly over his ears before lying back flat on the bed; after he pressed play, he closed his eyes.  

Around track three, he was cognizant of the fact that he was thinking about Jonathan.  He was always thinking about him, so it wasn’t exactly special: But he was picturing , the way he used to on the phone.  Picturing Jonathan in a world where he finally stopped being so damn stubborn and listened to the fucking tape.  Would he have his eyes shut, like he did when they listened to Japanese Whispers?  Did he have a favorite track yet?  Did he think it was as good as Pornography ?  (Steve kind of didn’t.) 

Did Jonathan hear Robert Smith saying suck harder, suck your insides out and think how Steve was right about it being sex music?  Did it give him that sunburnt feeling, too? 

It wasn’t clear when thinking about Jonathan sitting on his bed and listening to The Cure―sort of hoping that in some weird twist of fate that they were doing it at the same exact time―turned into wishing he was there or Jonathan was here, though he preferred Jonathan’s room with all its books and posters and organized clutter.

Steve wanted to be sitting on the bed together, listening to this.  Occasionally looking up at each other as if to say, holy fuck, that was cool.  Afterwards, Steve would smoke a cigarette while Jonathan prattled about themes and imagery , and Steve would be so fucking happy that he would stay outside way longer than he actually wanted to, getting mosquito bites and sleeping on his feet, just to keep from cutting him off.

All the warning signs were there.  Mentally slipping into Jonathan’s room was dangerous territory; going further, onto his bed, was almost a guarantee.  Before Steve knew it, he was back in that dream.  Sitting together.  Laughing.  Leaning forward, leaning in.  

At first he tried to trick himself into thinking he’d been lulled into half-sleep by laying back and listening to music.  But he could open his eyes and look around and even sit up in the bed, and it was still there.  

For once, he let himself think about it. 

In the dream, they were kissing like they’d kissed a hundred times, when in reality Steve always had to weigh his options before he so much as nudged him.  It had been so fucking easy.  

Steve wanted things to be easy.  Steve wanted Jonathan to be here.  

Even if it meant that they were kissing.  

That was all Steve had ever been good at, anyways.  None of his girlfriends seemed to have thought he was particularly smart or funny, maybe not even handsome; but he could kiss well.  He knew how to make a girl feel pretty.

Maybe he could’ve done that for Jonathan, if he hadn’t been busy ragging on his bowl cut and turning away when he took off his shirt.  Maybe he had wanted to.  He wished he hadn’t turned away when Jonathan took off his shirt.  He wished he could walk around in Jonathan’s mind and know what it was like to want this all the time.  

At what point did it stop making him feel sick to his stomach?  At what point do you become a queer?    

Steve felt sick.  He wanted to feel sicker.  He wanted to get this out of his system, like sticking his fingers down his throat when he had a hangover.  

He followed the last thought to its natural conclusion.

 ― 

Robin gags.  Steve rolls his eyes.

“I’m trying to keep this rated L for lesbian, okay?  You’re the one who keeps bitching about me being a Victorian prude about this.”  

Snorting, Robin exclaims, “You’re still a Victorian prude!  Just a gross one.  I already know you’re gonna tell me that after you did that , you thought it was just the power of friendship.  Right?” 

 ― 

The first thing Steve did afterwards was rip his headphones off, run to the bathroom, and heave into the toilet.    

It didn’t feel like it was out of his system at all, even after he actually puked.  It was like it had been with Jonathan, flashing before his eyes, only now he was seeing himself in the third person: Teasing and flirting and not touching his girlfriend for two goddamn months.  

There was a fleeting, horrible moment where he thought maybe Jonathan wasn’t even the queer one; Steve had just wanted him to be.  He almost puked again.

But Jonathan had all but admitted it a hundred times.  He was.  Jonathan had accepted it at some point, way before they started hanging out.  He wasn’t like Steve.  He never had the normal life, the girlfriend; didn’t seem to want it.

Steve wanted it so badly it hurt.  He wanted to marry a nice girl, have a gaggle of kids and a golden retriever; he’d always wanted that, since he was little.  Nancy Wheeler had felt like his first real shot at it until he fucked it up.  He didn’t even know if Nancy would agree to it―she seemed indifferent to kids, except her little sister.  But she was nice.  She was with him when his life was still normal.  When he was still normal.

That Friday, Steve told Mike to extend an offer to Nancy to come along with him any time.  

She never did take him up on it, but he saw her at a party―another one of those Loch Nora drop-ins that he could walk to and stumble home from―the weekend before school started back.  It wasn’t what he’d call her scene, not that he knew what her scene was anymore.  She was there with steadfastly-sober Barbara Holland.  They surprised Steve by approaching him as he was huddled in a corner, guzzling one last beer.

Nancy was, in short, sloshed.  At some point, she’d spilled punch on her shirt.  And she was grinning at Steve like they were the best of friends when she grabbed his arm and screeched, “Hi!” over the music.  

“Hey Nance,” he shouted back―the music really was too fucking loud.

They migrated outside eventually, Barb hovering like a disapproving babysitter while Nancy talked about her summer: She’d gone to journalism camp up north and met a lot of cool people.  She was thinking about getting a job.  She still thought Mike was a shit head, which Steve agreed with.  

“Meet any guys at camp?” he asked.

She shook her head.  “It was the summer of Nancy.”  

In her inebriated state, she seemed to think that this was really profound, so Steve said, “Totally.  I think I had a summer of Steve.”

Eventually, Barb got pretty transparent about looking at her watch and tapping her foot, which made Nancy giggle; but she stood up, smoothing her skirt.  

“Why’d you never come over?” Steve asked, mostly because he didn’t want her to leave.  He missed her.  It had always been true that he missed her.

She placed a hand on his shoulder.  “Because I’m not an idiot, Steve.”

“Would it have been idiotic?” 

Frowning, she put her other hand on the opposite shoulder.  She leaned in, not like she was about to kiss him but like she was Coach Davis giving him a stern pep talk.  “Yes.  It would have.”  

He sort of wanted to cry.  

“Why?”

She frowned like the question puzzled her.  Like it should be obvious.  “Because the last few times you kissed me…it was like…in your head, you were kissing someone else.”  

 ― 

When school started in September, Steve found that his popularity had not been magically restored by summer break.  Nancy would at least smile at him now, offer a little wave in the hallway; but he didn’t show up for basketball conditioning and as he walked up to Ms. Click’s classroom at lunch time, he saw that her door was already propped open.  She had been tapped to teach 12th grade English that year, too, thank God.  

“Don’t thank God,” she’d groaned.  “Thank the lack of funding from our lousy governor.” 

With school back in session and the weather getting colder, Steve thought the kids might lose interest in him.  But it seemed that even if he wasn’t allowed to join their party, they had taken some kind of vote and decided that he was a staple of their weekends.  He had been persuaded to fill out a character sheet for DND―a paladin, because it seemed like the coolest thing he could be and because it made Mike seethe with barely-suppressed rage―but he still wasn’t going to play.  Lucas and Dustin said that he was going to be an NPC in their next campaign, whatever the hell that meant.

He turned eighteen on the 23rd, which meant being dragged through the ritual torture of family birthday dinner at Enzo’s with the thrilling addition of a serious talk about his future (or lack thereof).  But the next weekend his parents were gone and the kids presented him with a bag of M&Ms and a drawing of a knight that all of them, even Mike, had signed; so it wasn’t the worst birthday of his life, all things considered.

Jonathan managed to stay in his periphery, which Steve told himself he was grateful for.  It was for the best.  Since the night he’d listened to The Top , he had been trying to meet thoughts of Jonathan with a sort of counter-vision, one that was tried-and-true for getting him through countless hours of loneliness.  

Lately, he had come to think of it as the life he would have with whatever girl he met in college.  (If he could get into college.)  This girl would have never known him as King Steve or as the loser who hung out with Jonathan Byers, but just as he was: Steve, a normal guy.  Nothing remarkable, but with the potential to be a good dad.  Maybe they’d have a lake house where they’d spend their summers, or an RV.

When she asked him about high school, he already knew what he would say: “It was a long time ago.”  Followed by a casual shrug, a charming smile.  A kiss on the cheek.  Cue music.  End scene, cut , fade to black.

Most days, the fantasy kept him from feeling mixed-up.  It realigned him with what his goals had been before he knew about monsters and parallel realities, making them feel like they were still achievable.  

At first, he’d try to picture what this dream girl would be like.  An artsy type, since it was college―edgy and alternative, someone who’d show him music and make him go to poetry slams.  Steve could be into that.  In their invented backstory, she’d been wary of him at first, thinking they’d have nothing in common, until he wowed her with his musical knowledge.  

Things got suspicious when he realized he was picturing her as a lanky, androgynous brunette.  He stuck to imagining his overarching goals after that.  

 ― 

On the second Saturday in October, the phone rang just before noon.  

The person on the other end was crying so hard that he sounded like he might be gagging and Steve could just make out that it was Will’s voice, slurring miserably, “Chester died.”

“Oh, shit,” Steve said, because what else was there to say?   

On the other end, Will exhaled shakily.  He sounded more collected when he asked, “Do you―do you have a shovel?  We only have one and I…you live the closest and I need to help Jonathan, because Bob doesn’t get off work until five and I can’t just…we can’t just…”

He was crying again, working his way back up to the gagging sobs that Steve had heard first.  Steve couldn’t imagine him wielding a shovel taller and heavier than him, burying his own dog.  And he knew Jonathan wouldn’t want Will’s help, was probably kicking himself for not finding a way to hide it and say Chester had gone to live on a farm somewhere.  The ground had probably started to freeze; they would be chipping away at it until dark.

Steve scrubbed his free hand over his face.  “Gimme ten minutes, okay?” 

 ― 

Will met him at the door, red-cheeked and puffy-eyed.  

Steve wasn’t sure how Will would feel about a hug, being a Byers; so he chose the safe option, ruffling Will’s hair with the hand that wasn’t holding the shovel, and said, “Hey, buddy.”

“Hi,” he squeaked.   Then, quieter, “Sorry.” 

“What are you sorry about?  I’m sorry.  About Chester.”  

Will shrugged.  He was the sorryingest child Steve had ever met: Once, he had apologized to Steve for choking on a peppermint with what must have been his first breath after Steve slapped his back to clear his airway.  

Mutely, Will extended his hand for the shovel.  

“No way,” Steve said.  “It’ll go faster with me.  Where’s your brother?” 

For whatever reason, he couldn’t bring himself to say Jonathan .  He had only just accepted that this was really what he was going to do as he was pulling into the driveway.    

Will pointed him around the back of the house―“That’s where it…where Chester is.”

The first thing he saw was Chester, bundled into a faded floral sheet.  The second was Jonathan, digging with his back to the house.  In spite of the chill, Steve could see from his hair that he was drenched with sweat from the effort.  At the sound of Steve’s footsteps, he said, “I told you to stay inside, buddy.”

His voice was softer than Steve had ever heard it, with a thickness like he’d just been crying.  It occurred to Steve, just then, that it had been almost six months since he had heard it at all.  

Stupidly, he wanted to prolong the inevitable moment when Jonathan turned around saw that it wasn’t Will’s footsteps he’d heard; the moment that his voice would change, if he’d even talk to him.  Steve thought if he stood there long enough, maybe he’d come up with something halfway decent to say, something more than I’m sorry that your dog died and that you’re gay and that I asked you about it.  Things have been really fucked up since we stopped being friends.

Jonathan tossed a few more shovelfuls of dirt over his shoulder, huffing, and turned toward him.  “Seriously, go back in-” 

Steve watched as Jonathan’s face morphed from the compassionate-if-exasperated older brother to confusion to disbelief, finally settling somewhere on the border of angry and exhausted.  It shouldn’t have sent a jolt of electricity up the base of Steve’s spine; but it had been so long since he’d gotten one of Jonathan’s looks.  And he was already feeling a lot of things he shouldn’t, those days.  

“Will called me,” Steve explained, hands raised in a don’t shoot gesture.  “You need help.” 

He didn’t leave it to a question or an offer, knowing already what the answer would be.

Jonathan gave him the answer he’d expected anyway: A curt, “I don’t.” 

If history was any indication, they could keep at this until whenever this Bob clown Joyce was dating actually got off work.  Steve bit his tongue and took a few cautious steps forward.  

Sweat was dripping from the ends of Jonathan’s hair―grown longer, since Steve had last seen him―and he was still wearing his pajamas, his ratty sherpa coat discarded on the steps of the nearby shed.  His arms were shaking with the exertion of digging into the half-frozen, hard-packed dirt.  But the look on his face didn’t change.  

I don’t need your help.  I don’t want your help.

Steve had never seen something so small and vulnerable and vicious.  He imagined it must look like this when an animal with its leg caught in a trap takes a few valiant, futile snaps at an approaching hunter.

The hunter was a role that Steve had been trying his hardest to move out of; but how was the animal meant to know the difference between the hunter and the good samaritan who just wanted to free its leg?  

Steve moved forward again.  Prepared to be bitten.

When he reached the edge of the grave and Jonathan still didn’t say anything, he started digging.  

 ― 

They dug in silence for an hour, maybe two.  The rest of the boys began trickling in on their bikes just after Steve, explaining that they were there for “the funeral;” Steve and Jonathan were at least in agreement when they shooed them inside.  Steve didn’t know how deep they would need to go to keep Chester safe from the elements, and he didn’t think Jonathan would answer him if he asked; so he kept on until Jonathan cleared his throat and said, “You can stop.” 

Near the end, they’d had to hop into the hole together, an arrangement that was claustrophobic at best; but Steve had been careful to keep to his area.  He glanced up at Jonathan, already clambering out, the hems of his flannel pajama pants soaked through with mud.

“I’m sorry,” Steve blurted, hauling himself out after him.  “About Chester.  He was a good dog.” 

Jonathan was propped up against the handle of his shovel, staring vacantly out at the woods.  He didn’t look at Steve as he said, “He was sick for a few months.” 

Steve wanted to say Will told me.  A few weeks ago, when the kids had decided teaching Steve to play Risk was a good use of their Friday night.  Will had been out of it, missing turns and making what Dustin exclaimed were rookie mistakes.  Finally, he’d rushed out that Chester’s nose was bleeding again―it had been happening more and more lately, he said, but this time there was a lot of blood.  He said Jonathan promised they would take him to the vet when he got paid.  

Will had been acting weird for months, actually, going blank at random and needing to be shaken back to reality, which the other boys―especially Mike―seemed to have taken to as their personal, moral obligation.  Confidentially, Lucas and Dustin had told Steve that Will’s therapy appointments were for PTSD.

“Like the guys in Vietnam?” Steve asked.

Dustin had opened his mouth to say something that was no doubt unhelpful and sarcastic, but Lucas had cut him off with a glare.  “Exactly like that.” 

Jonathan knew all of this, of course: He and Will seemed like they practically shared one brain.  Maybe he figured that Will had already told Steve, since he was around so much.  Steve imagined that Jonathan hated that.  

“I’m sorry,” Steve said again.  

Jonathan blinked, hard, before turning towards him.  “I can finish up from here.”  

Not, Thank you, Steve.  I’m sorry too, Steve.  Stay for dinner, Steve.

“Could you stop being so fucking stubborn?” Steve snapped.  “What good does it do if you collapse out here?” 

Jonathan, having apparently used his full allotment of words for Steve for the day, just stared at him.  Big hollow eyes with dark circles underneath, blank in the same way they’d been almost a year ago, when he rang Steve up at the BP on the last normal night of their lives.  Like Steve was still just that annoying prick from the basketball team, the one Jonathan had hated.  

The stare broke something in Steve’s brain; it was almost audible, like a cork popping.

“What the hell did I ever do to you?” 

There were chinks in that argument from the beginning, considering the laundry list of things that Steve had done ―ants and army jackets.  But nothing had earned him six months of silence before.  How many fucking times was he supposed to say sorry?  What was he meant to be sorry for?  And Jonathan still wasn’t fucking talking, even after Steve spent all goddamn summer waiting for him to.  

“Why did you get to be the one to decide we weren’t friends anymore?  Because you think I care that you’re…that I care about that?  I don’t give a shit, Jonathan.  So you can stop acting like a martyr about everything.” 

Steve couldn’t say it outright.  He’d been wondering, lately, if Jonathan had ever even said it out loud, to anybody.  The thought of him trusting someone else enough to tell them but not Steve had made him feel sick.

Quietly, Jonathan said, “Not everything is about just you.” 

“This is about me!  It’s me and you out here, Byers, not anyone else.  Not our dads or your mom or your brother: It’s me.  You’ve decided there’s something wrong with me and you won’t even fucking tell me what it is.”  Steve was entering the territory of saying things he’d barely even allowed himself to think before; angry things, mostly.  Dangerous things.  He kept going.  “I gave up my whole life to listen to The Cure in your fucking bedroom.  You’re the reason Nancy dumped me.  I spent all summer thinking you were going to call me and you just―you just―”  

Jonathan’s face was carefully neutral; but Steve knew that he wanted to argue from the way his jaw was working, his grip on the shovel’s handle gone white-knuckled.  

There were two choices, as Steve saw it.  He could take it back and lower his voice, finish burying Chester, and tactfully slide Will a twenty on his way out so that they could order takeout for dinner; or he could push harder, until Jonathan had no choice but to scream at him, maybe even hit him.  And at least screaming and hitting meant that Steve could still evoke something in him.  

Steve didn’t know when he’d started crying; he swiped at his face, threw his shovel down, and pushed.  

“You did this to me and now you won’t even talk to me.” 

Finally, finally , Jonathan bit out, “I did what to you?” 

Fuck.  Fuck, fuck, fuck.

He knew what Jonathan had heard; for once, he could admit that it was what he had meant.

You made me a freak.  You made me like you.  

Weakly, Steve repeated, “This.  I’m not like this.” 

Jonathan whipped around.  Laid into him.  “Are you fucking kidding me?  Which is it, Steve?  Do you not care, or am I contagious?  Have you ever stopped to think about why you feel like this now?  Maybe it’s because you spent years cowering behind your deranged friend and pretending not to be; and now he’s dead and you still can’t admit it.  At least I can be honest with myself.”

“You can’t even say it!  So don’t act like I’m some kind of coward when you can’t―”

Jonathan cut him off, screaming now, the way Steve thought he had wanted: “Queer!  I’m a queer, is that what you want?” 

It wasn’t.  

Steve had wanted Jonathan to ask him to stay for dinner.  He would have told him about Joni Mitchell and Vashti Bunyan, house-sitting for Ms. Click, and how Will and his friends were the best part of the last few months.  He would have skipped the guilt trip, skipped questions; maybe alluded to it in a few weeks, asked about that stupid fucking cassette.  He had wanted to talk for hours until Jonathan asked him, shyly, to stay the night.  

He had already spent too much time thinking about being queer, about Jonathan being queer; about how it made him feel and what it made him.  Desperately, Steve reached for his vision of the wife and kids and the lakehouse, but it wasn’t there.  All that he could see and think was that Jonathan was standing in front of him with his chest heaving, having just called himself a queer.  

For a second, he thought that Jonathan was really going to hit him.

“I just want things to be normal,” Steve mumbled.  He was crying again, on the verge of really losing it this time.  

Behind them, the back door swung open.  “Steve?  Jonathan?”  

Jonathan was quick on his feet, snapping, “Go back inside” before Steve had even registered whose voice he’d heard.  He kept his back to the house, hiding his tear-streaked face.  

A coward, as usual.

Another voice―Lucas―asked, timidly, “Are you guys alright?”  

“We heard yelling,” Dustin said.  The door didn’t close.  “Do you need help?”

Steve cleared his throat.  He could at least back Jonathan up on this.  “ No , Dustin.  It’s a tough day, that’s all.  Get inside.”

He didn’t turn around, but he knew what he would see in their faces: Disbelief.  They were too fucking smart for their own good at the best of times; and if they had heard yelling, I’m a queer, is that what you want? was pretty unambiguously not about Chester.  

There was a pause, like they were thinking about arguing, before Lucas said, “Okay.”  Dustin was still babbling protests as the door slammed shut.

 ―   

They finished burying Chester in tense silence.  Once they were allowed outside, the kids fashioned him a cross out of sticks and twine and insisted that everyone gather while they said a few words; mostly, the words were some variation of good dog .  

Halfway through, it occurred to Steve that all of them had gathered at Will’s funeral less than a year ago, just like this.  He had watched as the boys threw flowers on his coffin and listened to Jonathan give that short, profound speech that Steve had always been so fucking impressed by, even when Jonathan was just a means to an end for finding Tommy.  

He felt the briefest, most selfish pang of longing for that time, when Jonathan was still a mystery that he hadn’t even realized he wanted to solve.  

 ― 

“Oh my fucking God.  You…you dingus!” Robin screeches.  “You told him he made you gay but like, in a bad way?  I thought we were building up to a kiss, for fuck’s sake!”

Steve doesn’t know how Robin will react to this, so he doesn’t say it just yet: That after two years, they’re still just building up to a kiss, because he had a penchant for freaking out and fucking up whenever it seemed like a real possibility.  Could you even say you were building up to something that may well never happen?  

Instead he says, “I wasn’t going to kiss him in front of his dead dog” and leaves it at that.