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It doesn’t take long to start missing weekends in Philly – not for Steve, anyway.
The bank account with his down payment mocks him every time its statement comes in the mail. Because travel between Pennsylvania and Indiana can be fast, or it can be cheap, but it can’t be both. Every time he flies – the only way to make the trip possible with his limited time off, and only at inflated long-weekend travel prices – the fund dwindles. Every time he skips going to keep the fund flush, the more sick he is at the thought of using it.
Staying in Hawkins was never meant to feel like drowning. It didn’t at first, with Mike, and Lucas, and Max, and Dustin – fucking Dustin – still around to swap battle stories and share the emotional load. It’s harder, now that they’re gone. There’s still Holly. Still Derek, and the rest of the kids. But it’s not the same. Steve isn’t their big brother. He’s their responsible adult, and he can’t lean on them. Not the way he needs to.
Steve can count on one hand the number of times he’s kept his promise. Four. That first summer, July and August, before the school year started, and again for Thanksgiving, then one last time over Spring Break. What twists the knife deepest is knowing their reunions have carried on without him. The trip between Boston and New York isn’t as daunting – still almost five hours one way, but doable on a weekend – and Nancy and Robin are even closer, both in Massachusetts. They stay connected, despite Steve’s absence. An awful part of Steve’s brain tries to convince him it’s because of it, that it’s easier to move on into their new lives when they aren’t beholden to dragging him out of his.
He tells the administration in May that he won’t be available over the summer to coach. It feels like too short notice, and the guilt makes his lungs heavy, but they clap him on the shoulder and tell him to go be young, and Steve hasn’t been young in so long, but god damn it, he’s going to try.
He drives to Philly, so he’ll have the car, even if driving in city traffic spikes his anxiety more than facing down a Demogorgon. Robin greets him on the porch with an enthusiastic hug that nearly sends them both toppling down the stairs. He drops his bags, holds her waist, and spins her.
“Asshole,” she grumbles. “Why has it been so long?”
Why did you move halfway across the country without me? he thinks, but doesn’t say.
She takes his arm and one of his bags, while he takes the other, and ushers him inside. The place is just as Steve remembers, charming and compactly built, with centuries of character in the unevenness of the floorboards and the ornate panes of window glass. Steve remembers this, too, Jonathan Byers reaching out with a steady hand and a lopsided smile. Steve grasps his palm and pulls him in close. His bag hits the ground for the second time, so Steve can wrap an arm around his shoulder and pull him into a proper hug.
“Drive was okay?” Jonathan checks. Steve is here in one piece, but they both know that says little about what might have happened along the way.
“All good,” Steve assures him.
“He’s even on time,” Nancy teases, trailing into the entryway in a tank top and jean shorts, so effortlessly beautiful, Steve has to remind himself to close his mouth. She places a hand on Jonathan’s shoulder, a wordless request, and Jonathan steps back to give her space to hug Steve next.
“It’s good to see you,” she whispers.
“Yeah,” Steve replies. “You, too.”
Her calendar is the most unforgiving, with work at the Herald gracious to give her so much as a week off as an intern, and if Steve holds her that extra bit tighter, it only makes sense. Robin has plans to be in Philly all summer, until the new term starts at Smith. Jonathan is less sure. He’s living on campus, with ostensibly nowhere to be until the dorms open again in the fall, but New York is a big city, and he has enough friends with couches to crash on. Steve hopes he doesn’t, fights the urge to climb on Jonathan’s back like an undignified barnacle and make sure he doesn’t go anywhere for the rest of the summer without Steve. Even though he’s eager to spend time one-on-one with Robin, he wants Jonathan and Nancy close by.
Steve is itching to do something productive, like get in the kitchen, after ten hours behind the wheel, but Nancy looses a hoard of takeout menus from the junk drawer, and they order out instead. They trade containers and drink from Jonathan’s carefully curated selection of craft beer. The fuller Steve gets, the heavier his eyelids. He’s comfortable, and warm, and his foot meets Jonathan’s under the table, and neither of them pulls away.
“You have no idea how much I’ve missed this,” Steve sighs. He gives Jonathan’s foot a nudge for emphasis and catches Nancy’s accidentally, too.
“You’re the one who keeps bailing,” Nancy reminds him.
Steve scoffs. “Yeah, because I live ten bajillion miles away,” he says.
“Which is your choice,” she replies.
He rolls his eyes. “Way to have any sympathy for me.”
Robin laughs, and Nancy stammers.
“You can’t be mad at me for pointing out the obvious,” Nancy says. “You’re the one who chose to stay in Hawkins. You could have gotten out when we did.”
“What makes you think any of us had to get out?” Steve challenges. It’s Nancy’s turn to roll her eyes, but Steve doubles down. “I’m serious. The gates are closed. The Upside Down is gone. Is Hawkins really so bad anymore?”
“The fact that you even have to ask honestly shocks me,” Nancy says.
“Steve,” Robin tries, gentler than Nancy. “It’s never been just the Upside Down, and I think you know that.”
“She means how, when you’re not Mr. Popular, that place is kind of a shit hole,” Jonathan adds.
“You’re telling me there’s nothing worth staying for?” Steve says, trying to ignore the way the words twist in his chest.
Jonathan shrugs. “Are you saying there’s nothing worth leaving for?”
Steve doesn’t know what to say to that. He takes another sip of beer to dull the spice in his mouth from the Szechuan beef. The townhouse is hot, even for an early summer evening, and the added peppercorn heat beads sweat at his temples that runs down his neck.
“Do you ever think about the future?” Steve asks, not quite a topic change, but almost.
Nancy frowns. “I’m always thinking about the future,” she says.
“Sometimes,” Jonathan replies.
“As little as humanly possible,” Robin says.
“But you still applied to college,” Steve continues, piggybacking off Robin’s answer. “You moved on. Obviously, you have some idea about your future.”
“Steve,” Robin sighs. “I have no idea about my future. I’m doing an English degree because it has the most inoffensive, broad-spectrum appeal I could think of. I don’t know what career it’s going to lead me into, or where I’m going to settle down, or if I even will settle down. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the whole marriage and kids thing isn’t as neatly wrapped up with a little bow for me as it is for you.”
Nancy touches Robin’s arm softly. Jonathan leans forward, stormclouds in his eyes, sad for Robin, but sad for Will, too, Steve is sure.
“That doesn’t freak you the fuck out?” Steve asks.
Robin rolls her eyes. “Like it makes a difference either way,” she says. “Some things just are. Like how I’m never gonna wake up one morning not a lesbian. Nancy’s never going to see the truth buried in a dangerous situation and look the other way. Jonathan’s movies are never gonna land for a mainstream audience.”
“Hey,” Jonathan interjects.
“Don’t tell me that’s not exactly what you want,” Robin replies.
“Oh yeah,” Steve challenges. “So, what’s my thing, then? Peaked in high school?”
“No, dumbass,” Robin says.
Nancy answers. “You’ll never get over it.”
The frankness of the statement falls over Steve’s shoulders like cold water. He snaps his gaze to Nancy – they all do – and she explains.
“Even if you stay in Hawkins, and buy the house, and have the wife and the six kids,” she says. “Some part of you is always going to be here with us, wishing you’d followed. You don’t let things go, Steve. Not when you love them. And Robin, and Jonathan, and me? We’re gonna be okay, because we have each other. But, you’ll stay in Hawkins, and you’ll always wonder what if, and it’ll kill you.”
The lump in Steve’s throat feels enormous. He turns to Robin, and her eyes are wet, heel pressed to her mouth to muffle the sound of her crying. Steve blinks, and the pain lights him up.
“Is that what you think?” he asks her.
Robin reaches her free hand across the table, and without hesitation, Steve takes it.
“We’ve been through so much together,” she says. “How can you stand us leaving you behind?”
Steve clears his throat, scrunches his eyes, like that might clear them. “I can do things in Hawkins,” he says. “I have a job. I can settle down. Start a family.”
“You think you can’t do those things anywhere else?” Robin challenges.
“I know I can do them in Hawkins,” he insists.
“The Steve Harrington I know is braver than that.”
He loves the way Robin sees to the core of him most days, but now, it feels suffocating. He forces a reluctant breath, then another, until the walls stop closing in.
“You’re gonna be a great dad one day,” Robin says. “But you are gonna kick yourself every day for the rest of your life if you rush into fatherhood just because it makes you feel like you have a purpose.”
“So, what is my purpose?” Steve asks, a bit desperate, like a castaway in deep water on a sinking lifeboat.
“Right now?” Jonathan says. “Your purpose is to be twenty-three, okay? Stay up too late, and get weirdly co-dependent with your friends, and somewhere along the way, maybe, figure out where you actually want to go next in life. But, if not, that’s fine, too.”
“Steve,” Robin reminds him. “We’re just getting started.”
Steve chuckles, tries to force enough levity to cut through the tension, thick in the air. “Except for Nance,” he says. “I guess at least one of us has to have it all together.”
“I’m actually still pretty much a mess,” Nancy replies, then proves it by leaning in and taking Steve’s mouth.
Steve’s only option is to kiss her back. His body refuses to do anything else, even as his brain screams at him that it’s a terrible idea, that he’s been down this road with Nancy before, and it ended badly.
Except Steve hasn’t been down this exact road, has he? A road where kissing Nancy comes as a package deal with the weight of Robin’s hand in his and the steady press of Jonathan’s foot, instep looped over instep.
Nancy nips his lower lip, and Steve yields. He bends his neck as she stands, her hands cupping his face in a fierce display of possession that wrings a pitiful, high-pitched whine from his throat. Jonathan’s toe flexes against his ankle, a wordless offer of comfort, an endorsement that thunders like cannonfire, like the frantic beating of Steve’s heart.
Nancy’s hands slide to his collar, and she tugs. He lets her pull him to his feet as she sits back against the tabletop. Steve’s hands fall to either side of her waist, gripping the lip and boxing her in as he fits his hips between the spread of hers. She braces him in place with the vice grip of her knees, and it keeps him from jumping completely out of his skin when long, deft fingers brush his hair from the nape of his neck.
“Oh, fuck,” Steve groans, his lips pulling from Nancy’s, sudden and sharp, the trail of Jonathan’s nose down the shell of his ear pulling him like a fish on a hook. Nancy follows his mouth, bites his lower lip, vulnerable from its parted panting, and pulls like a predator tears into prey. Jonathan’s hand spreads across his ribs, the touch an inferno. Steve reaches up, covers it with his own, and presses harder, like he can help Jonathan find his way under his skin.
The table creaks. Steve feels the effect of its shifting weight against his thighs. Nancy releases his mouth, and Steve’s eyes flutter open. He watches Robin crawl forward on her hands and knees until she’s close enough to turn and settle at Nancy’s hip. They sit like mirror images, like Yin and Yang when Robin reaches her hand around Nancy’s waist to press against the small of her back, and Nancy cradles the back of Robin’s skull. The angle of their faces gives Steve just enough space to watch the way Robin nudges Nancy’s nose with her own before claiming her mouth. They kiss with a familiarity, tender and possessive, that betrays that it isn’t the first time.
“Since Easter weekend,” Jonathan supplies, whispered against the column of Steve’s throat, like he’s read his mind. “Which you’d know if you were around more.”
“Then what the hell is this?” Steve asks.
Nancy pulls her mouth from Robin’s but keeps their foreheads together. She lowers her hand to the nape of Robin’s neck, and it leaves enough room for them both to turn and meet Steve’s gaze, pupils blown wide.
“Whatever the hell we want,” Nancy replies.
“Whatever you want,” Jonathan corrects. Steve has a protest on the tip of his tongue that dies when Jonathan weaves his fingers through his hair and pulls, wrenching his head back just enough to expose his throat to Nancy’s hungry eyes.
“Sweet Jesus,” Steve sighs. His head swims as his blood rushes south. His fingers twitch atop Jonathan’s, and Steve leads their hands lower to snake under his shirt and meet bare skin. It feels so fucking good – Steve’s head is static.
“What are you up for?” Nancy murmurs. For a second, Steve thinks she’s talking to him, but when his eyes focus again, he sees her looking at Robin.
“All of it,” Robin replies. Nancy tips her chin up with the point of her finger, kisses her, then stares expectantly. “Being there for it, I mean,” Robin continues, and Nancy smiles, smug and satisfied at pulling a more refined explanation from Robin without so much as a word. “And if I’m not anymore, I’ll tell you. Promise.”
“Good,” Nancy coos, then rewards her with another kiss.
Jonathan’s nails drag through the hair low on Steve’s stomach, and his hips buck, chasing to feel his touch lower. It’s pathetically eager, but Steve’s brain is liquid, ready to leak from his ears. The swimming feeling is destabilizing, and he lets his head fall back against Jonathan’s shoulder.
“Can I unbutton your pants?” Jonathan asks, breath skating across Steve’s skin.
“God, are we really doing this?” Steve says. He wants to say yes, searches for the consent hiding in his mouth, digs for it with a sweep of his tongue behind his molars.
Jonathan pauses at Steve’s silence, slides his hand from under Steve’s shirt and brings it higher, resting over his thundering heartbeat. He presses closer, so Steve feels him from shoulder to hip to kneecap. The hardness of Jonathan’s arousal pressing against him is unmistakable, yet feels the furthest thing from a demand. It’s raw and vulnerable, a confession of his desire for Steve, and a promise to remain unflinching in that desire, whatever Steve says next, however clumsy.
“Only if you want, Steve,” Jonathan assures him, and it’s enough. Nancy’s desire is bestial, her beauty dark and light like a magpie’s feathers, with as much aggression in the way she’s territorial over the things she views as hers. Jonathan is docile, gentle in a way that’s giant, that shields Steve from the intensity in Nancy’s eyes. Steve’s pulse slows with the deliberate, regulated breaths Jonathan draws against his back.
“Can we go upstairs?” Steve asks, and Jonathan presses a kiss under the curve of his ear like a reward for using his words.
“Yeah,” he says. “We can.”
He steps back, gives Steve space to step back, too. Nancy slides from the table once there’s room, though not much. She’s nose to nose with Steve when she takes his hand in hers and leads him to the stairs.
There’s a king mattress in the main bedroom, and that’s where she steers them. Jonathan disappears, and it’s on the tip of Steve’s tongue to question why, but he appears again with a box of condoms, which he rattles by way of explanation.
The reality of the situation hits Steve like a tidal wave. His head spins as adrenaline floods him, part arousal, part fear. There’s always been a part of him that’s had vague suspicions about his interest in men. Even if he’s never been drawn to them outright, he’s never understood the disgust other men seem to feel at the idea. Sex feels good, and hands are hands, and mouths are mouths.
Still, he’s never thought seriously about what he’s agreed to do, and it makes him lightheaded. He’s floaty enough for Nancy to push around like a puppet. She shoves his chest, and he lands heavy on the end of the bed.
“Can I trust you to use your words?” Nancy asks. She grabs the hem of her shirt and pulls it off without fanfare. Her bra is plain white, and Steve wants to get it wet with his tongue, until the fabric soaks through and her nipples are visible underneath.
“Steve,” she prompts.
Steve blinks. “Huh?” he stammers, then says, “oh, me. Right.”
Nancy sighs with her belt half undone. “I’ll take that as a no,” she says. “Will you tell us if we ask?”
“Tell you what?” Steve asks.
“How you’re doing,” Robin explains. She’s on the bed just behind him, sitting cross-legged so her knee pokes into his hip. “It’s important to check in. Always, obviously, but especially when we’re doing something like this, where it’s new for you, and you might not know what you like or don’t like until you try it.”
“I’m pretty sure anything that involves my dick being touched is something I’m hardwired to like,” Steve jokes.
Jonathan hums, not quite a laugh, but close. “As much as I agree with that in theory,” he says. “Sometimes your body doesn’t agree in practice.”
He tosses the box of condoms to Nancy, who catches it easily. Jonathan crosses the room and crouches down, between the spread of Steve’s thighs, with his hands on his knees, so they’re eye to eye. The heat of his touch burns like a brand.
“It’s fine if you don’t like something,” Jonathan says. “We just wanna make sure you’ll tell us. You don’t have to play the hero and take it.”
“There’s a lot of stuff I don’t like,” Robin adds. She leans closer, and the press of her cheek against his shoulder is mercifully grounding. “You know, given that I’m still very much a lesbian.”
“You three have done this before.” He comes to the realization out loud. Steve thought it was just Robin and Nancy, since Easter, but can see now that he was wrong. Robin is comfortable – as comfortable as he’s ever seen her, down to the stillness of her hands – with Jonathan in the room.
“A few times,” Robin confirms.
Steve wants to ask why she never told him, but sees it from her perspective in the next breath. Admitting to having threesomes with your best friend’s ex and that ex’s ex isn’t something you do over the phone.
He’s been away too long.
“Are you?” Steve asks Jonathan, the question half-finished. He knows what he’s asking, but isn’t sure how to phrase it, what would be polite, and if, with what they’re about to do, politeness is something that even matters.
Jonathan shrugs, understanding Steve anyway. “I’m not gay,” he says. “But New York is different. I’ve met people – not just women, but men, too, and women who used to be men, and people who aren’t neatly either. And I guess what I’ve realized is that I like them all, for all the ways they’re unique. And I like sharing moments with people that are real and intimate. And sometimes that includes having sex.”
Steve nods. He’s a bit lost, as lost as any time Jonathan’s explained the ideology behind his latest short film – which is to say that he understands just enough to know that Jonathan doesn’t think one bit like Steve does, and that Steve admires the hell out of him because of it.
“And you?” Steve asks Nancy.
Nancy scoffs and rolls her eyes. “Nothing that poetic,” she says. “I’ve just accepted that, in addition to liking guys, I also think girls are fucking hot.”
“Because they are,” Robin interjects, and Steve can’t help but add, “hear, hear!”
“What about you?” Jonathan asks. His thumb rubs against the inside of Steve’s knee, which pulls his focus as much as Jonathan’s questions. He shivers.
“I’m,” Steve starts, then swallows. Wets his lips. “Curious, maybe? I don’t really know.”
“Okay,” Jonathan says. He leans in closer, until his nose skims Steve’s. “We can figure that out together.”
Jonathan initiates the kiss, but Steve accepts it without protest. He moves against Jonathan’s mouth, catalogues the differences between kissing a man and a woman at first, then lets the comparisons go, until the only thought he has is that he’s enjoying it.
A lot.
“Pants?” Jonathan checks as their mouths part and, frantically, Steve nods.
Jonathan undoes his belt and nudges his hips. At Jonathan’s cue, Steve lifts up on his hands and lets Jonathan undress him.
“Can I blow you?” Jonathan asks, looking up at Steve through his lashes with hungry eyes, and Steve’s ears are ringing.
“Yeah,” Steve agrees, when he regains enough control of his tongue to speak. He’s acutely aware of the way the wet sounds of mouths meeting and parting still fill the room, even if he and Jonathan aren’t kissing anymore. Steve doesn’t look over, isn’t sure if he’s allowed and doesn’t know how to ask, but the mental image coaxes him to full hardness before Jonathan’s even reached inside his underwear.
Jonathan strokes him – once, twice – and there’s no denying that Steve likes it, not with the way his hips buck up into the exploratory touch. Jonathan reaches out with his free hand and searches the length of the mattress until he comes up with the condom box.
“I test for HIV,” Jonathan says, and Steve’s blood freezes in his veins.
Right, HIV. Because that’s something else Steve’s thought about before, but only in the abstract. He’s not a jackass. He knows that straight people can transmit HIV sexually as much as two men having sex can. But the fear that trails like cold fingers at the nape of his neck is instinctual, and takes more than one deep breath to force down.
“My last test was two weeks ago. It was negative, and I haven’t been with anyone since,” Jonathan continues. “But I’m still going to use a condom for anything that involves exchanging fluids. Which includes blow jobs.”
Numbly, Steve nods. “Right,” he says. “That makes sense.”
Jonathan strokes his thumb against the jut of Steve’s hip, and it feels better, lets some of the tension out of his muscles. The room is quiet, and Steve imagines anxiety must be as tightly coiled in Robin and Nancy’s bodies, waiting for Steve’s reaction. Only Jonathan is relaxed, thumb still rubbing circles.
“Still okay?” Jonathan checks. “Remember, you’re allowed to change your mind, any time for any reason.”
It’s the permission to say no that lets Steve finally say yes. “Put your mouth on me, Byers,” he says, and Jonathan smiles up at him, crooked and cocky, like he’s eager to make Steve regret his words.
He’s hard as a rock, and the condom goes on easily. If Steve has reservations about the latex getting in the way of his pleasure, they don’t last. Jonathan takes him as deep as he can manage in the first bob of his head – about halfway, which is impressive with Steve’s length and girth – and aside from sparing a brief thought for how the artificial tang must be an unpleasant taste in Jonathan’s mouth, he doesn’t think of the condom again.
“Fucking Christ,” Steve groans, threading his fingers through Jonathan’s hair. Jonathan hums, and he very nearly fails to stop himself from thrusting into his mouth.
“Can I watch?”
It’s Robin’s voice, raspier than Steve’s ever heard it, and quiet. He glances over his shoulder and sees her, flush high on her cheeks, stripped down to her bra and underwear, staring dead ahead at the bedroom wall. Nancy’s half in her lap, lips trailing across her throat while her fingers tease Robin’s collar bones. She looks Steve dead in the eye and brushes her knuckle across Robin’s pert nipple in a way that makes Robin gasp.
“Yeah,” Steve replies, licks his lips, then asks, “is it okay if I do?”
Robin looks over at him. Her pupils are blown. She’s his best friend, and Steve will respect whatever she tells him, but he desperately hopes the answer is yes.
“Yeah,” Robin replies. “It’s okay if you watch. Some touch is okay, too,” she adds. “Nothing actually sexual, but if you wanna hold my hand, or rest your head on my shoulder.”
Steve nods. “Okay,” he says. “Yeah, I can do that. And you can, too. If you wanna touch me, I mean. However’s comfortable for you.”
There are more permissions on the tip of his tongue – he’s definitely attracted to women, even if Robin isn’t to men, and any impulse she has to explore, he’s more than okay with, if the decision is on her terms – but Jonathan rubs the flat of his knuckle against Steve’s sack in a way turns his whole brain to static.
“With that decided,” Nancy murmurs, then wastes no time unclasping Robin’s bra and taking one of her nipples between her teeth.
“God, Nancy,” Robin whines, and Nancy hums, satisfied. She offers her other nipple a cursory nip, then continues her path down Robin’s body until she’s on her knees between Robin’s spread thighs, passing the flat of her tongue against her cunt through her underwear.
Robin reaches out and threads her fingers with Steve’s, and Steve grips back tight. Robin’s hips roll. Steve's cock throbs.
“Oh, fuck,” he gasps. “I’m gonna come.”
Nancy pulls her mouth from Robin long enough to tease, “that fast?”
Jonathan draws back, kisses Steve’s hips and thighs, and gives him time to catch his breath. Steve wants to last – of course he does – but wishes desperately he had Jonathan’s mouth on him again.
“Shimmy up,” Nancy instructs.
Robin does first, peeling out of her underwear as she goes. Steve thinks the instruction is only for her, but Nancy reaches out and tugs on his hair at the nape of his neck and stares at him expectantly.
“Oh,” Steve says. “Me, too?”
“That’s the idea,” Nancy replies. She shoves at his shoulders, until he’s flat on his back at Robin’s side, pressed against her sweat-damp skin down to the wrist. She turns her hand and interlocks their pinkies.
Nancy pulls another condom from the box and passes it to Jonathan, rising gingerly to his feet. She strips efficiently out of her remaining clothes, then makes room between the spread of Robin’s legs for her shoulders, looping each of her thighs overtop.
“You wanted to watch?” Nancy says, just enough of a question in her tone that Steve knows he could say no.
He doesn’t want to.
He watches from under his lashes as Nancy lowers her mouth to Robin’s pussy, to where Jonathan stands and deliberately finishes undressing, stroking himself at the tableau spread out before him. He rolls on the condom and nudges Nancy’s hips up with his knee. His hand on the small of her back keeps her spine curved.
Jonathan slides his cock home in Nancy’s pussy, and Steve takes himself in hand. He can’t see it happening, but knows the way Jonathan fucks her from the way the whole bed moves with every thrust. Nancy’s tongue presses deeper into Robin’s core, and the force makes Robin's tits bounce.
Steve is about to take the condom off, satisfied with playing spectator, when Nancy bats his hand away and moves her head from between Robin’s thighs. She drops a kiss to Steve’s hip, about all she can reach in their current position, but Jonathan picks up fast. He pulls out and gives Nancy room shift over on her elbows, so one hand can stay cupped against Robin’s pussy while the other braces her up to sink her mouth on Steve’s cock.
It moves quickly from there. It’s been a while, and Nancy’s mouth is both familiar and not, and Robin presses her mouth against Steve’s shoulder to muffle her cries, and when she comes, she bites, and Steve follows her over the edge. Nancy whines her release against Steve’s hipbone, and Jonathan finishes with a deep, desperate groan that tries valiantly to bring Steve’s dick back to attention.
“Holy shit,” Steve breathes, dragging himself up to sit and making quick work of his condom. He looks up, and Jonathan has a hand held out, so Steve ties it off and passes it over.
While Jonathan busies himself in the ensuite, they share the bed in companionable silence, Nancy draped across Robin’s chest, pressing kisses to her collar bones. Jonathan returns with a warm washcloth and sits at the edge of the bed. He reaches out with hands that are unbearably gentle to pass the cloth over Steve’s still-sensitive dick.
“Did you seriously only bring one?” Nancy grouses.
Jonathan hums. “Go pee,” he replies. “That’s your rule, remember?”
Nancy huffs, but staggers to her feet and grabs Robin’s hands to drag her along.
They aren’t alone. Not really, with the bathroom door open and the soft sounds of conversation, laughter, and shameless urination trickling in. Still, the moment feels private. Intimate.
“Thanks,” Steve whispers.
Jonathan smiles. “Of course.”
He finishes his task, then sets the rapidly cooling cloth on the nightstand. He brings his hand back and runs his fingers across Steve’s hip. It makes Steve’s chest feel entirely too full.
“Did you guys really want me to leave Hawkins?” Steve asks, the post-orgasm endorphin rush making him bold.
Jonathan’s mouth twists, like he’s reluctant to answer, but he nods.
“You don’t have to look so unhappy about it,” Steve teases, but there’s a thread of hurt in his voice that’s undeniably real.
Jonathan sighs. “We don’t want to have to drag you here,” he says. “It kinda sucks that you’re making us ask. Especially for Robin. You guys are practically soulmates.”
The lump in Steve’s throat appears so suddenly that it hurts. “You don’t think it would have been nice of her to tell me that’s what she wanted?”
“I’m telling you now.”
Steve looks over and sees Robin in the threshold of the ensuite, the knuckle of her thumb worried between her teeth. Nancy slips unobtrusively around her, rifles through Jonathan’s suitcase and comes up with a well-worn t-shirt. She offers it to Robin, who takes it gratefully, hands clumsy in their rush to hide her nakedness.
She looks vulnerable, a lost lamb. Steve’s chest aches.
“What if I don’t fit in with the rest of you?” He gives voice to the fear that’s plagued him since they first defeated Vecna, when the world opened to them again for the first time in eighteen months, and they’d all been so eager to leave.
“My world isn’t big like yours,” Steve continues. “What if I'm always as small as Hawkins?”
Robin shakes her head. She moves to Steve’s side, then climbs in bed behind him to pull him tight to her chest.
“For one,” Robin says against his temple. “We both know that our version of Hawkins was anything but small.”
Steve huffs a laugh, but tips his head, a tacit agreement.
“And, two,” Robin continues. “Whatever size you are, big or small, doesn’t matter. You’re one of us, Steve. Can you please just accept that?”
Steve nods. Once, but it’s enough.
“And hey,” Robin says. “About the nuggets. Give it ten years and a turkey baster, and I could be down for that.”
Nancy laughs, sharp and bright. She rushes forward, swamped in another one of Jonathan’s pilfered shirts, and grabs Jonathan by the arm on her way by to drag him into bed, too.
“One pregnancy,” Nancy says. “And only under the understanding that I’m not the PTA bake sale kind of mom, whether I carried the kid or not.”
“I make pretty decent brownies,” Jonathan offers. “I’ll even leave the pot out.”
Steve can’t stop the smile as it spreads across his face. He shifts and lets Robin get comfortable beside him, her limbs tangled with Nancy’s, who plays little spoon to Jonathan. Jonathan smiles at Steve, sleepy and slow, and Steve smiles back.
Philly is too far away.
He’ll deal with that tomorrow.