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The bass line is strong enough to rattle Tommy’s bones as he pushes his way off the dance floor. The song’s some kind of Europop hit designed to get the heart pumping and the feet moving and it’s definitely working; Tommy’s sweaty and pleasantly out of breath as he escapes the writhing bodies and makes his way over to the bar.
He promises himself that this will be his last drink of the night as he signals the bartender for another beer, and he has to raise his voice to order over the pumping beat of the music, loud enough to probably be part of the building’s DNA by now.
The bartender passes him a bottle and Tommy takes a swig, pleasantly tipsy if not quite drunk just yet as he turns and steadies himself against the bar. He considers maybe starting up a conversation with the guy next to him, because he’s cute even if he might not be Tommy’s type, but then the guy turns to speak to someone behind him, leaning away from the bar as he does so, and, as if meant to be, Tommy finds himself looking straight at Steve fucking Harrington standing not six feet away.
Tommy freezes, beer halfway to his mouth as he stares, transfixed by the way the flashing lights from the dance floor sweep across Steve’s face, and then the guy next to him turns and leans back across the bar again to pass on his order, and Steve’s blocked from view once more. Tommy lowers the bottle and desperately tries to peer around the guy’s head, because there’s no way Steve’s actually here, in a gay club in New York, nearly a decade after Tommy left both him and Hawkins in the dust.
There’s no fucking way.
Someone pushes their way up to the counter behind him, shoulder brushing up against his back, and Tommy’s forced to move or possibly risk an accidental elbow to the kidney; it’s a Saturday night and the bar area’s almost as crowded as the dance floor right now, which is why it takes him a moment to make his way through the crush of people and circle back to where he thinks he saw Steve, but once he does, Steve is gone.
It makes sense, Tommy tells himself; he’s seeing things, the flashing lights and the music amping up whatever wishful thinking might have been brought on by the alcohol floating around his system. New York is full of pretty boys, after all, and even if he hasn’t encountered someone quite like Steve just yet, a few of them have come pretty fucking close – it figures that he would mistake one of them for some kind of childhood apparition after this morning’s catch-up call with Carol.
He honestly hasn’t thought about Steve in years.
Or, well—
He’s tried not to, but memories of first loves and all that; sometimes, they just sneak up on you.
Because that’s what Steve had been. Tommy’s secure enough in himself to admit that now. He’s not a confused kid in a small, backwater town anymore – doesn’t have to mask his feelings in false bravado and macho aggression – and some part of him thinks that he might just want to show Steve that – thereof, probably, the drunken hallucination.
They parted on bad terms, after all, and that might be the one regret Tommy has left from Hawkins, because he doesn’t think Steve even knows why; he has no clue that the real reason Tommy started going for Nancy Wheeler’s throat the moment she came into the picture was that he couldn’t fucking stand watching her touch Steve like she had the right to do so.
God knows what Tommy had even expected to come out of the whole mess with Byers and the graffiti across the marquee – Steve single and back with him and Carol where he belonged, maybe, licking his wounds and letting them take care of him – but it hadn’t gone Tommy’s way, that’s for fucking sure. It still leaves a sour taste in his mouth when he thinks about it, and the worst thing is that he can’t even justify any of it; it tastes like heartbreak and that’s all kinds of fucked up, because Steve’s not some kind of great love that somehow got away, even if it sometimes sure fucking feels like it.
Tommy sighs and takes another sip of his beer. Fucking Carol and her fucking phone calls, bringing back memories of things better left forgotten – they always manage to fuck with Tommy’s head in one way or another.
He drains the last of his drink and sets the bottle down on a nearby table before letting himself be swept along by the crowd again – allows a bottle-blond twink to grab him by the hand and pull him deeper into the throng of people on the dance floor – and loses himself in the crush of bodies for a couple more songs before his bladder finally decides to remind him of its existence.
He slips away to piss and finds that he has to brace himself against the wall above the urinal, head hurting with the bright lights of the restroom, and he might just be a bit more drunk than he’d figured. He finishes, zips up, and gives his hands a cursory rinse beneath the tap before wobbling back out, and that’s when it happens again; he happens to glance in the direction of the lounge area with its tables and booths and, just as he does, the crowd parts like the Red Sea, and there he is again.
Steve fucking Harrington.
Tommy’s heading in his direction before he’s even made the conscious decision to move his feet, drawn in by the apparition like a moth to a flame – mesmerized by the reds and greens and blues that flit over Steve’s face in time with the heavy overhead dance beat. Steve’s hair’s a bit shorter than it was when Tommy last saw him, but it’s in step with the style now, and it looks good. It looks great. It looks fucking fantastic, actually, like always, like back when Tommy had slowly grown to realize that his preoccupation with Steve hadn’t been so much about the hair or the clothes or the popularity but with Steve himself.
It’s the same kind of realization now – not so slow this time, but the same stomach-jolting lurch as before as Tommy watches Steve say something to someone next to him before turning to take a seat at one of the booths, reaching out to move a glass away from the table’s edge – always fussy about that kind of thing, always a lover of order – and Holy shit, Tommy thinks, he’s real. He’s here, and he’s real.
He wipes his hands off on his pants and suddenly feels a bit sick in the face of the possibilities. He should go over, probably. Right? He should say hello or something. They haven’t kept in touch – haven’t seen each other in nearly a decade – so it wouldn’t be weird for Tommy to want to catch up, would it?
Fuck it, he thinks, bolstered by several drinks and an emboldening buzz. If Steve’s here, tonight, in this club, that must mean something. Like, a sign or some shit. Tommy’s probably never gonna get this fucking chance again, so why the hell not?
He pushes his way through the crowd, trying to keep his eyes on Steve so that he doesn’t lose him again, and Steve doesn’t seem to notice his approach until Tommy’s practically right on top of him.
‟Hey,” Tommy says – shouts, really, because the music’s still near-deafening – and maybe he’s being a bit too loud because Steve seems to jerk in surprise.
He turns to face Tommy and his eyes widen in recognition, and it makes something warm and familiar settle in place in Tommy’s chest.
“Tommy?” Steve replies – too low for Tommy to hear, but he can see Steve’s lips move around his name – and Steve stands up like he’s about to greet Tommy but then he hesitates, as if unsure of how to proceed – like he doesn’t know what kind of contact Tommy would welcome, never mind that Tommy’s the one who sought him out in the first place.
Tommy makes the decision for him; takes a step forward and pulls Steve into a tight hug, and Steve stiffens before relaxing and raising his arms to clutch Tommy back. Tommy thinks he can feel Steve’s body shake in surprised laughter against his chest as Steve thumps his back, and he can’t help his own laughter from slipping out.
“Hey, man,” he says into Steve’s ear, and he’s glad that the beat of the music hides whatever it is he knows must be obvious in his voice – relief or joy or wistfulness – because Steve’s solid and warm against his body and fuck, Tommy’s missed him.
Even when Steve was right there, he’d missed him – had spent all of his senior year with the loss eating away at him, caught up in Hargrove’s bullshit with Steve close enough to touch but at the same time further away from Tommy than he’d ever been before. It makes him not want to let go now, but after a moment or so Steve moves as if to pull away, and Tommy sighs and gives him one last pat on the back before he lets Steve take a step back; grasps him by the shoulders instead and gives him a good look, and Steve looks back, grinning.
Fuck, apart from the hair he looks exactly the same as when Tommy last saw him – same infectious grin and dark, gentle eyes – and Tommy can’t believe just how happy that makes him. Steve was a constant through so much of his life that when he finally broke away it had been like a shock to Tommy’s system – like losing a limb, because Tommy had been left to learn how to function without him, and he’d fucked that up too by joining up with Hargrove, hadn’t he?
“What are you doing here, dude?” Steve says, and Tommy blinks, trying to parse the question before he realizes that Steve doesn’t mean here, in Steve’s company, but here, in a club catering exclusively to men and the few women who enjoy dancing the night away without being approached.
“Could ask you the same,” he manages, and Steve’s grin turns almost rueful.
“Shit,” he says. “Hawkins, man.”
“Hawkins,” Tommy agrees, because he can just about guess what Steve’s alluding to – thinks about it too sometimes, wondering if, had they grown up somewhere else – a metropolis like New York, or San Francisco, or Chicago – Tommy would have still felt pressured into dating Carol to avoid the questions that never actually ended up being asked of him. He suspects the answer is no.
The answer to the other question – if he would have still let Steve drift away from him without revealing the real reason why their friendship started to falter halfway through their junior year – is sadly not as clear.
Steve turns to gesture toward the booth now, and they take a seat on opposite sides of the table. The width of it feels almost like a gaping chasm now that he’s had Steve so close again, but Steve doesn’t seem to think anything of the distance as he settles back in his seat, so Tommy tries not to let it show.
He’s sweating, and he doesn’t know if it’s with excitement or anxiety because, looking at Steve, Tommy feels even more sure about what he’s gonna do – he made up his mind halfway through elbowing his way here through the crowd, but now he knows that he’s definitely gonna go for it. Gonna shoot his shot, because what’s he got to lose? Worst case, he figures Steve will let him down gently, because that’s the kind of person he is – the kind of person he was, all those years ago, and Tommy’s pretty certain that that, at least, hasn’t changed.
Tommy sure as hell isn’t a stranger to rejection, so it can’t hurt worse than the first time it happened, right? Two stupid kids, both apparently hiding a vital part of themselves, hurling abuse at each other – Steve calling Tommy an asshole to his face and taking off as Tommy raved at his back.
“So, uh, wasn’t expecting to run into you tonight,” he tells Steve, because that seems to be the obvious place to start. “Figured you’d be settled in Hawkins by now. Y’know, married with two point five kids and a cushy job with your dad.”
Steve looks wryly amused at that. “Nah,” he says. “Ended up disowned in L.A. instead.”
Only visiting, then. Tommy can work with that.
“Yeah, fuck your dad,” he says. “He was always a bastard.”
Steve grins. “Pretty much,” he agrees. He peers at Tommy, and Tommy knows that look – waits patiently for Steve to ask, and it doesn’t take him long to do just that; “So you still keep in touch with Carol?”
Tommy can’t help but laugh. “Sure,” he says. “She’s down in Maryland. Married, with a kid. I’m Uncle Tommy who visits on special occasions and brings awesome gifts.”
Steve’s surprise is carefully neutral as he digests the news. “Always figured you’d end up—”
“Married and divorced to each other a few times over?” Tommy guesses, because he can’t even begin to count the times Steve had to step in to play the role of peacekeeper when Tommy and Carol got into it.
The corner of Steve’s mouth twitches. “Something like that,” he agrees.
“And what about you, huh?” Tommy probes. “I don’t see Fancy Nancy around. The great love of your life, dude.”
Steve and Nancy Wheeler had been broken up by the time Tommy had left town, but he’d seen the way they never really stopped looking at each other – the awkward meetings in the hallways of the school, the way Steve’s gaze would linger as Nancy walked away – and he wouldn’t put it past Steve to have charmed his way back into her good graces by now.
Steve, however, makes a face. ”Maybe not so great,” he concedes, and Tommy has to bite back the pleased grin that’s threatening to break through.
“Never would’ve guessed,” he says. It’s mostly true, to be honest; Nancy had seemed inevitable back then – the last great nail in the coffin of whatever useless hope Tommy had once held. “Sorry, man.”
“You never even liked her,” Steve replies, but it’s easy, like he’s amused by Tommy’s rather poor attempt at civility.
Tommy shrugs but doesn’t deny it. “Carol and I broke up about a year after coming out here,” he says, trying to steer the conversation back on track. “Bound to happen. We’re still friends, but she doesn’t have a dick, so there’s that.”
Steve’s mouth opens and closes. It’s difficult to tell with the lights, but Tommy thinks his face might just be coloring a tad. Figures; he was always the prude to Carol and Tommy’s freewheeling hedonists. Tommy wonders if it translates into bed too or if he’s more open to suggestion in the privacy of a dark bedroom – tries not to think about slowly taking Steve apart so that he can find out.
He clears his throat. “Yeah,” he drawls. “Carol wanted a threesome and I figured why the hell not? So she picked out a guy and that’s pretty much all it took for me to see the light.” He shrugs. ‟Found out later that she did it all for my benefit. ”
Steve’s face slips into an expression Tommy hasn’t seen in ten years, not since the last time he had regaled Steve with tales of his – mostly made-up – sexual prowess.
“You asshole,” Steve says.
Tommy grins. “So how about you? Just guys or are you double dippin’?”
It’s an old, familiar game – I’ll tell mine and then you have to tell yours – and Steve purses his lips but then seems to give in.
“Both,” he says. “No girls for a long time, but, uh—”
“Shit, man,” Tommy says, and he can’t help but shake his head in incredulity now that Steve’s actually out and said it. “Fuck, if I’d known back then...”
Steve’s brow furrows. “What?”
He looks genuinely confused, and Tommy figures this is probably the best opening he’s ever going to get. He leans across the table as he lines up his shot.
“I loved you,” he tells Steve. “Did you know that? Like, head over heels, totally doomed Romeo-and-Juliet kind of love.”
Steve jerks his head back, eyes widening as he blinks. He appears stunned – totally caught off guard, as if he hadn’t had a clue. Tommy had apparently hidden it pretty well, and he feels a brief flicker of satisfaction at that as he watches Steve’s face, expression cycling through disbelief, remembrance, and then finally cautious acceptance as he seems to piece it all together. Tommy imagines it’s like laying a puzzle; a piece of animosity toward Nancy here, a piece of lingering touches there, and it all creates a giant picture of Tommy’s hopeless dreams and wishes.
“I never knew,” Steve admits. He looks down at the table, and Tommy tries to not start cracking his knuckles – a nervous habit of his that Steve knows all about – as he waits for Steve to digest the information.
Tommy’s spent the past few years sleeping around – trying to make up for lost time, maybe – but with Steve, he’d give it a real shot. Even if Steve’s out in L.A., they could make it work. Phone calls and visits, and he knows that Steve would be one hundred percent committed, because he always is, and that would help Tommy stay on track too.
He images what Steve would look like against the backdrop of Tommy’s life – late-night trips to the local bodega, breakfast at that coffee shop down the block, strolls beneath the shade of the trees in Central Park, spread out in Tommy’s bed all fucked out – and it makes for a perfectly pretty picture.
Or hell, maybe Tommy will fly out west; walk the California boardwalks with Steve, take in the sun and the beaches and the surf, because he bets Steve surfs, and maybe he can teach Tommy too.
“Do you want to—” he says, at the same time as Steve glances back up, a pained look on his face and Tommy’s name on his lips, but Tommy doesn’t get to hear the rest of what Steve is about to say because two drinks are suddenly slammed down onto the table between them.
Tommy startles and looks up, away from the sloshing contents of the glasses, to find himself face-to-face with some random guy. He’s about to tell him to fuck off – that this is a private conversation – but the guy slips into the booth next to Steve instead.
“Hi,” the guy says, visibly guarded, all piercing blue eyes and curls.
He’s shorter than Steve, but stockier, and they must know each other because Steve’s not shoving him away – he’s not doing much of anything except maybe losing some of the tension in his shoulders now that the guy’s here.
Tommy watches the guy shuffle closer to Steve, until their shoulders butt up against each other, and his left hand, though under the table and hidden from view, has obviously found its way to Steve’s thigh judging by the positioning of his arm. He touches Steve like Nancy had back then – like it’s his right to do so, and judging by Steve’s utter lack of care, maybe it is.
Tommy’s having some kind of weird high school flashbacks as he watches Steve shoot the guy a look that other people might call fond but which Tommy, with all his years of experience in reading Steve, would probably call love-struck instead.
“This is Dustin,” Steve says, and it’s like he can’t help but smile now, for real. “Dustin, this is—”
The guy’s expression finally brightens, slipping out of its half-frown into something more relaxed.
“I remember you!” he declares. “Timmy, right?”
Steve’s face does a thing, but Tommy, for all of his experience, doesn’t know how to translate the expression.
“Tommy,” he says instead, and the guy – Dustin – looks insufferably smug, like now that he knows who Tommy is, he’s decided that he doesn’t pose any kind of threat whatsoever.
“Steve didn’t tell me you were into guys,” he says, and Tommy’s torn between feeling happy at how Steve’s obviously mentioned him, and confused because Dustin’s acting as if he and Tommy have met before and that’s—
“Hold up,” Tommy says. He turns to look at Steve. “Is this one of your kids?”
Dustin straightens in his seat, like he’s fully prepared to take offense, but Tommy keeps his eyes on Steve, who looks vaguely resigned at the prospect of this line of conversation. Which, yeah, pretty much confirms it.
“Huh,” Tommy says as he peers over at Dustin, because they have met before, though just in passing – running into each other once or twice downtown, both Steve and Tommy pretending not to see the other as the kids milling around Steve either ignored Tommy or gave him the stink-eye.
Dustin – tiny and laughably non-intimidating back then – had been the worst offender from what Tommy can remember, often keeping the glare up long enough for Steve to notice and attempt to snap the kid out of it by whacking him across the back of the head.
He’s not a kid anymore, of course – must be in his mid-twenties by now if Tommy’s math is correct – and right now he’s staring Tommy down again, his hand moving beneath the table, like he’s stroking Steve’s thigh as he does it. It’s a proprietary touch – utterly possessive – and whatever happened to the rest of Steve’s little flock of middle schoolers, he obviously decided to keep this one for himself.
It leaves a sour taste in Tommy’s mouth because what the fuck? Tommy left, and the kid stayed, and this is what came out of it? Tommy’s spent his entire life believing he’d never have a chance, only now it’s painfully obvious that had he not run away from Hawkins like a dog with its tail tucked between its legs, that might be Tommy sitting there instead, hand on Steve like he’s always wanted and having Steve not only endure the touch but actually press into it.
The picture of the two of them beneath the harsh fluorescent lights of a New York bodega is replaced with the bright colors of Starcourt Mall the weekend before Tommy left; he’d lingered outside the ice cream shop to get one last glimpse of Steve, that is true, but now, instead of walking away, he imagines himself actually going inside – imagines striking up a conversation devoid of bite or malice; pictures embarking on a tentative truce that slips back into friendship as they reconnect and then maybe closer, until he dares to do something about it – until he kisses Steve and Steve kisses him back.
The corner of Dustin’s mouth twitches. Tommy realizes he’s been staring blindly at the guy as the missed opportunity played out in his mind, and now there’s a glint in Dustin’s eyes like he can guess exactly what Tommy’s thinking.
“Tommy,” Steve says, all gentle just like Tommy knew he’d be.
“No, it’s fine,” he says. “I should, uh—” He raps his knuckles against the table – another nervous tic that has Steve’s expression turning a bit sad – and starts to get up. “I should go. Maybe I’ll see you around, huh?”
“Maybe,” Dustin says, but they both know it’s a lie.
“It was good seeing you again, man,” Steve adds, but he doesn’t ask for Tommy’s number, obviously content to jet back to L.A. with Dustin and leave it like this – leave Tommy like this – and Tommy gives him a tight-lipped smile and a nod before turning and slipping back into the crowd.
He feels a bit unsteady on his feet and doesn’t know if it’s the emotional sucker punch he just took that’s left him reeling or if the alcohol is still affecting him. He doesn’t feel drunk anymore, that’s for sure, and he heads for the bar and signals for a beer, intent on getting that pleasant buzz back because seriously, fuck this shit.
Tommy hadn’t known he had any more regrets left to discover, but apparently, there are still plenty waiting to be unearthed. He’s always wished he would have swallowed his pride and gone back to Steve after their fallout instead of waiting for Steve to come around, and now he knows exactly the consequences of his choices. Fucking Hargrove and his fucking swagger. Tommy doesn’t know what he was thinking, throwing his lot in with that psychopath.
The bartender places a bottle on the counter and Tommy grabs it and chugs half of its contents in one go. He turns around and leans back against the bar, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand, and it’s grown late by now, the crowd thinning out as they get closer to final call, enough so that he can still see Steve and Dustin in the booth – sitting close, talking, and Steve’s shaking his head before cupping Dustin’s face in his hand and leaning in to kiss him, slow and easy and sweet, and Tommy finds himself frozen in place, stomach roiling.
“Ex-boyfriend?”
He startles, turning to face whoever just snuck up on him. It’s the bottle-blond from before, the one who pulled him out onto the dance floor, and he’s peering up at Tommy with an understanding look on his face.
“Something like that,” Tommy allows, and the blond makes a soft commiserating sound.
“I’m Seth,” he says, hand coming to rest on Tommy’s arm, and he’s pretty enough, but not in the same way Steve is.
Tommy’s beginning to realize that, to him, maybe no one ever will be, and it’s enough to make him just a tiny bit angry.
“You want a drink?” he asks.
Seth smiles, obviously pleased by the offer, so Tommy turns his back on the crowd and Steve and Dustin’s hands curling into Steve’s hair, and signals the bartender for another beer. Seth joins him by the counter, shoulder brushing up against Tommy’s arm as they wait, and sure, Tommy thinks, what the hell.
“Tommy,” he tells Seth, who hums thoughtfully.
“Tommy,” he murmurs, and it sounds pleasant enough coming from him. “It suits you.”
Tommy huffs a laugh because that’s a first, but fuck, maybe it’s a sign. He watches Seth grab the beer from the bartender and take a delicate sip.
“Hey,” Tommy says, “you wanna dance?” and he feels a tendril of pleasure at the way Seth’s face lights up.
‟I love this song!” he exclaims as he grabs Tommy’s hand and pulls him along, and Tommy allows himself one last look over his shoulder – at Steve laughing as Dustin pulls him in for another kiss – before he lets the crowd swallow him up.